Bøger af Henry Grabar

Shortlisted for the Zócalo Book PrizeNamed one of the best books of the year by The New Yorker and The New Republic“Consistently entertaining and often downright funny.” —The New Yorker“Wry and revelatory.” —The New York Times"A romp, packed with tales of anger, violence, theft, lust, greed, political chicanery and transportation policy gone wrong . . . highly entertaining." —The Los Angeles TimesAn entertaining, enlightening, and utterly original investigation into one of the most quietly influential forces in modern American life—the humble parking spotParking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a shocking number of Americans kill one another over parking spots, and we routinely do ri­diculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Since the advent of the car, we have deformed our cities in a Sisyphean quest for car storage, and as a result, much of the nation’s most valuable real estate is now devoted to empty vehicles. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, traffic patterns and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, and the overall quality of public space. Is this really the best use of our finite resources? Is parking really more important than everything else?   In a beguiling and absurdly hilarious mix of history, politics, and reportage, Slate staff writer Henry Grabar brilliantly surveys the nation’s parking crisis, revealing how the compulsion for car storage has exacerbated some of our most acute problems— from housing affordability to the accelerating global climate disaster—and, ultimately, how we can free our cities from park­ing’s cruel yoke.

"Much of the nation's most valuable real estate is now devoted exclusively to empty and idle vehicles, even as so many Americans struggle to find affordable housing. Parking determines the design of new buildings and the fate of old ones, patterns of traffic and the viability of transit, neighborhood politics and municipal finance, the quality of public space, and even the course of floodwaters. Can this really be the best use of our finite resources and space? Why have we done this to the places we love? Is parking really more important than anything else? These are the questions Slate staff writer Henry Grabar sets out to answer, telling a ... story about the strange and wonderful superorganism that is the modern American city. In a ... mix of history, politics, and reportage, Grabar ... surveys the pain points of the nation's parking crisis"--

How will we travel in the future? Essays on the transport to come, from sidewalk scooters to levitating trainsWith the promise of delivery drones, personal helicopters, and groceries delivered right to your refrigerator, one might think we are living in the best of transportation times. Most city commuters would be quick to tell you otherwise. Of all the technological interventions continuously inserted into our daily travels, which ones will last? Is ride-sharing here to stay? In ten years will we all be taking autonomous vehicles to work? Will traffic as we know it cease to exist? While this volume makes no promises or predictions, it does take a step back from the hype of the new to explore what might seem like yesterday's solutions: buses, bikes and even trains. Perhaps remedies to our transportation woes are not all in the future but are hiding in plain and present sight. The Future of Transportation is the third volume in the SOM Thinkers series, conceived by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. SOM Thinkers originated from a desire to start a public conversation about the built environment. Rather than frame the subject in the expected "professional" language, the series poses today's most pressing questions about design and architecture in a bold and accessible way. This volume features work by Henry Grabar, Oliver Franklin-Wallis, Laura Bliss, Darran Anderson, Nick Van Mead, Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, Alison Griswold and Christopher Schaberg, with artwork by Olalekan Jeyifous.